The People of China

During the Cold War, there was a widely held recognition that the fact that the Soviet government was evil did not mean that all the people of the Soviet Union were evil. People were readily able to hold in mind the distinction between the ruler and the ruled.

At present there's a tendency in the West to show sympathy for the people of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan but in general a less thoughtful attitude towards China's Han majority. In the early days of 2020 reports of the stringency of the lockdown in Wuhan elicited sympathy, but that has long since disappeared from people's minds as we've dealt with our own restrictions. More recently the lockdown in Xi'an and the story of the woman who lost her child at the doors of a hospital because she didn't have a COVID test -- a story the Chinese censors let run internally for a while in a rare instance of the Chinese system allowing a release of pressure -- bubbled towards the surface of Western consciousness.

But as most people know from interacting with Chinese people in schools, neighborhoods and businesses all around the world -- the Chinese are people too. The reason many are willing to emigrate is that living in China has a ton of challenges. We read about some of the worst of them. 

I may or may not have recounted what Leslie's husband Walter had to deal with when his father passed away. Beijing -- a city of 20 million and change -- has something like 20 centers for cremating one's loved ones. Forget about interring them, that's obviously a challenge in a place as densely populated as China. With a life expectancy around 80 and 20 million people, ballpark a quarter of a million will die each year. So 20ish cremation facilities must handle that flow, call it 12,500 each per year over 250 odd business days, 50 funerals a day.  It turns out each family gets like 30-45 minutes to commemorate their loved one's life, and can have a very restricted number of guests in. Not ideal for a culture that venerates elders and ancestors.

That's just a small instance. In sum, we need to do a better job thinking of Chinese as people too. Yes their culture is different and we need to grok that too. And the only way we can do this is by talking to more Chinese people, consuming their books, movies, etc. Old school humanism.